I'll be honest and say that I was all set not to like this book....
Don't ask me to explain it beyond the hype, the wall-to-wall adulation everywhere, the 'new voice for the millenials' tag lines (which frankly made me feel a bit ancient and out of touch) and the fact that my Reading Friend and I had set against it from the off. In her defence I have to say Sally Rooney always sounds slightly bemused by it all when interviewed, maybe even faintly uncomfortable and embarrassed by what (to me) must feel like an enormous burden of responsibility when you're just out there writing books and trying to write another one.
Call us open-minded readers?
Well we are, and game for a read of anything before we cement the opinions, so, having grimaced and acknowledged our ambivalence, my Reading Friend and I agreed at our last meet-up that we would both read Normal People by Sally Rooney. We don't communicate in-between so I won't know her thoughts for another few weeks, but for what it's worth here are mine.
I started it that same afternoon, this for about the third time having previously baled out over the present tense of the first few pages...'he says'....'she turns'...you know the sort of thing that really annoys us avoiders of present tense fiction unless written by Hilary Mantel, but of course I'm sure you all know what happens next.
I couldn't put it down, read late into the night, finished it the next day and it's going up on my top shelf as my first Best Book of 2019.
I was subtly and very cleverly drawn into the lives of 'posh' Marianne Sheridan, the studious outsider and 'non-posh' Connell Waldron, the insider, child of a very down-to-earth single mum who cleans for Marianne's family. As Connell arrives at the house to collect his mum so he and Marianne start to talk and the relationship blossoms, though very much in secret. Marianne is the oddball at school, attracting ridicule and a victim of bullying, and Connell must wrestle with his own sense of embarrassment (verging on shame) at their romantic association.
Everything is exaggerated by the insecurities of adolescence, the self consciousness, the self-constructed person waiting for the confident adult to emerge, along with that inbuilt sense of inferiority to peers, all seep through into an addictive and compelling narrative arc that jumps ahead and then fills in what has happened. The time lapse may be four weeks, it may be two days, it may be five minutes but all enough to have me second guessing and keeping me hooked, whilst making the use of present tense both valid and essential (permission granted). It is all so artfully constructed and executed that is seems quite simple, but I doubt it was so simple in the making and ultimately it is beyond clever, because Normal People very quickly insists on reader investment along with the desperate need to know what will happen, how will life treat this young couple so compelled to be together in the mind of the reader, if not themselves.
And the cover image resonated in my mind too...the pair of them scrunched up in a sardine tin, claustrophobic, compressed, concealed, the lid peeled back to reveal two lives being lived.
Yet when you boil the book down to its plot essence maybe not a lot happens.
Boy meets girl...
Opposite side of the tracks...
Relationship begins...
They go through school and exams...
Move onto university and the next stage of their lives...
Meet new people...
Go in different directions...
Of course Sally Rooney adds more detail, and aspects of Marianne's life especially have the power to both disturb and explain, whilst Connell's struggles with the emotions of his emerging masculinity make for enlightening reading. Yet interestingly, when I thought about this afterwards, I had formed only a scant visual image of Marianne and Connell. No composite picture in my imagination of what they looked like (though I'm sure Sally Rooney must have laid it all down), yet I could (and still can) hear their voices and see their actions with crystal clarity. Dialogue, superbly well-written, rendered any attempts to create an image unnecessary. I even think I know how their minds work, which to me seems like a major accomplishment for any work of fiction, especially for someone like me who is always busy on the visuals, and for a book I had to be dragged screaming and kicking to read.
So there you have it, eating a big slice of reading humble pie and I would be very interested to know what others who had read Normal People think...
Has the hype been the book's demise for you to...
Or did you leap on it with gusto...
If you haven't read it and hadn't planned to might you give it a go now...
Do you find yourself setting against a book for no good reason...
Also, I baled out on Sally Rooney's first novel Conversations With Friends so I think I'd better revisit that one too, and of course I will now read anything else that she writes.
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